Bitly is an useful URL shortener that Ive used for numerous years. As a registered user I can develop custom-made, reduced URLs that people can in fact spell. I utilize these whenever I need to share a link to a Canva or Google Slides presentation due to the fact that the default URLs offered by those services are constantly long and incoherent..

Not all Bitly users are utilizing them for good reasons. Some individuals use them to hide nefarious links. There is an easy way to quickly determine whats behind a Bitly URL without really clicking on the link. The trick is to just add a “+” to the end of any Bitly URL. When you include the “+” the URL will redirect to Bitly instead of to whatever the original URL was. That will then reveal you the Bitly page on which the shortened URL is hosted and will reveal you what the original link was..
You can attempt this technique with a URL that I recently shortened. Bit.ly/ THWTAPRIL will lead you straight to a copy of the slides that I used my current Intro to Teaching History With Technology webinar. Bit.ly/ THWTAPRIL+ will lead you to the Bitly page where you can see my initial discussion URL and see when I developed the shortened URL..
Watch this short video to see how you can use the “+” technique to discover whats hidden behind a Bitly link..

Applications for Education.
Structure good digital citizenship and cyber security abilities is something that everyone ought to be assisting our trainees do. Showing them little pointers like this one to avoid clicking suspicious links is one of the manner ins which we can help our students build their digital citizenship and cyber safety abilities.

This post initially appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it somewhere else, it has actually been used without approval. Sites that frequently steal my (Richard Byrnes) work consist of CloudComputin, TodayHeadline, and 711Web.

Bitly is a handy URL shortener that Ive utilized for lots of years. There is a simple way to rapidly identify whats behind a Bitly URL without actually clicking on the link. When you add the “+” the URL will reroute to Bitly instead of to whatever the original URL was.